Painters, perhaps more than any other artisan, ply their trade at great heights above the ground usually on the top of ladders or atop scaffolding which is not necessarily as stable as desired. Additionally, a large amount of a painter's time is spent painting windows and doors, or indeed moldings, all of which require caulking or glazing putty of some type. Typically, the painter utilizes a caulking gun in which a caulking tube is inserted into a frame and the caulk extruded from the tip or nozzle of the tube. Tubes come with an elongated tip or nozzle which must be punctured with an elongated instrument in excess of four inches in length. Prior to puncture, the nozzle must be sliced off to provide the appropriate bead. In usual practice, the painter carries a coat hanger for the puncturing of the tube, a knife for the slicing of the tube, a putty knife for pushing the glazing points, and a variety of different screwdrivers for removal of switch plates, storm window brackets, sashes, and the like. Ordinarily, the painter does not wear a belt outside his painter's pants or overalls. This precludes the possibility of providing all of these tools in a convenient belt-carried holder. Rather the painter's pants are provided with numerous pockets and belt loops.
Aside from the inconvenience of having multiple tools which are required in the painting process, the tools themselves are often sharply pointed and therefore can cause injury should the painter fall on them.
While multiple element tools have been provided in the past, none of the prior art tools are specially adapted for use in the painting trades, and more specifically, none of the tools provide a combination of both apparatus for opening the caulking tube while at the same time providing an integral tool for glazing point setting. Further, no tools in the prior art combine the above elements with other tools in a combined tool set, such as flat head and phillips head screwdrivers, as well as the knives themselves.
There is therefore a need for a single tool in which the tool elements are protected within a housing and which are pivoted in an extendable and a one-hand operation to provide the unique functions required by painters. There is a further need to provide all of the functions of tools required by painters in one convenient instrument in which the elements are protected within the tool housing until pivoted and extended for use.
Of paramount importance is the requirement of a slender, cylindrical tool or poker having a longitudinal extent capable of being inserted into the nozzle of a caulking tube and extending down into the caulking tube to pierce the seal at the top of the tube where the nozzle joins the tube top. The nozzle piercing element desirably has a cutting edge at its distal end so as to permit easy puncture of the caulking tube seal.
Moreover, equally desirable is the need for a specially designed pusher bar to enable the setting of glazing points through the pushing of the point into adjacent wood or other puncturable material. The pusher bar must be of sufficient thickness to engage the setting point, unlike the thickness of traditional putty knives which are too thin to do the job, too flexible, and are too wide in some instances to permit adequate force to be imparted to the relatively small glazing point. Moreover, with putty knives, oftentimes the blade flexes into glass, cracking it. There is also the possibility of injury to one's hand during this operation.